Introduction

Most filmmakers start small and aspire to more elaborate productions and thematically richer narratives. On the contrary, South Korean writer-director Hong Sang-soo has been working backwards from that notion; his films seem to get increasingly shorter, with his first feature from 2021 (In Front of Your Face is the second) and 25th overall having a run time of just over an hour. Hong, however, has indulged in a sort of filmic maximalism, releasing between one and three films a year for the past